Louise Rafkin - Writing Sample

Business Lunch With Susie Bright

Susie Bright is the "avatar" of American erotica, according to The New York Times, but she is also a prolific writer, a teacher, mother, and performance artist. She is the editor of the popular Best American Erotica series, and the author of Susie's Bright's State of the Sexual Nation.

She writes a bi-monthly column about sexuality and popular culture for the online magazine Salon. She has taught courses on sexuality at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and performed her theater piece "How to Read a Dirty Picture" throughout the country. Her latest book, Full Exposure, is her first book about creating your own sexual philosophy.

What does it take to be a sex expert? Curiousity, empathy and a creative sense of humor. Your new book talks about the erotic as different from the sexual. What's the difference?

There are no hard and fast definitions with two such over-taxed words, but in general, the erotic describes our sexual feelings, desires, and emotions. It goes beyond the physical, and certainly beyond basic reproduction.

Do you think working women and executive women are too tired, too consumed with work, to have good sex lives?

No way. No one would ever ask if a successful, hard working man was too tired to have sex. We think of men "needing" sex to feel vital, refreshed, powerful. Well, women yearn for those same things as well. When we work hard, we need all our creative wits about us. We need to touch, be touched, nurtured, thrilled and get our rocks off as much as anyone!

What brief advice can you offer women whose sex lives are compromised by too much work?

"You can't take it with you!" If you don't take care of your inner life, your personal life, your precious work will suffer, and ultimately, so will your basic health that you count on to get you up in the morning. In my opinion, having a satisfying erotic life is as important to your well-being as good food, good rest and fresh air.

What about the midday "quickie"? Do you think it has gone the way of the three-martini lunch?

I hope not. I just wish women could be catered to in this area, that you could just ring a little bell and ...

What's the best book in your field you've ever read?

Ouch, that's too hard. For pure sex education, I'd say Jack Morin is my favorite author, and his book The Erotic Mind is the best book ever on the origins of sexual fantasy. But I've been more influenced by novels and movies than I have by non-fiction.

If you could invite any three people to lunch, living or dead, who would you invite? Where would you go?

I'd love to eat lunch with Emma Goldman, the Seven Muses and Casanova. We'd go to a big party in a stretch limo and eat finger foods and drink plum wine.

What's the worst business lunch you've ever had?

Once, in New York, a publisher in a suit just stared at me like I was some kind of California candy wrapper that just blew in the door. He asked me all about his favorite porn stars, and then, after his appetite for gossip was sated, he couldn't get rid of me fast enough. Moral: Don't have hypocrites for lunch, they give you the worst tummy ache.

Do you get tired of talking about sex?

Only with boring or insincere people.